[timmijo]

Hello.

I have been shooting with a Pentax K-r for close to a year now, and I usually shoot manual with older film lenses. My favorite lens is my Pentax F 70-210. I am having a little bit of trouble with exposure: not with setting it, but with seeing it.

For post-processing, I use Elements 11. I usually add an adjustment layer to call up the histogram in that program and to see where my sliders are, sliding the left one or the right one as need be.

It is difficult for me to tell when my photos are "too dark" just by eyeing them.

I like the look of the old Pentax film glass. It is rich, full, saturated, and shows lovely colors.

I do not like the look that seems to be industry standard today in which people's faces look almost colorless. This is what I see coming out of my friend's Canon 5D. She does a lot of post-processing as a professional portrait photographer. By the time she is done with a portrait, the person has practically no skin color.

Personally, I am a fair-skinned, freckle-headed blonde and have never had a photographer "get me right". I always look washed out. The current standard, or what I am calling the "industry standard" does not help this situation.

I understand the usefulness and popularity of the high-key portrait look, but for general portraiture, what I consider normal, others would say is "too dark".

In post-processing, in particular, I would like to understand the hieroglyphics that appear on the histogram in PSE 11. Maybe this will help. Any thoughts are surely appreciated.

P.S. The histogram that pops up on the back of my K-r immediately after shooting a shot is ok, but oftentimes, I am in too big a hurry to utilize it to its fullest potential. Thanks again.

[aglet]

not sure where to start with this request but I'll ask the obvious, just to make sure...

Is your monitor calibrated?
If not calibrated with some sort of colorimeter and set to an appropriate overall intensity and gamma then it should be at least set up to view sRGB images such that you can see the differences between all the different RGB intensities that would make up an image. The last few extreme light and dark levels are often going to be clipped or hard to distinguish but you should have discernible tonality over everything else.

Many people have their monitors set too bright and contrasty. This can make underexposed images look good and properly exposed ones look a bit too bright.

try this page as a starting point:

www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM

don't forget the effect of ambient light on your display as well. And if you have your display set to automatically adapt its brightness to the ambient light it could be making things worse instead of better.

[Nuff]

There is no "standard look" what you are most likely refer to is high key look. Which has been in since photography began.
Also you might have a low end monitor which doesn't handle highlights very well. Very often I find that with this cheap monitors they will display all of the highlight detail as white. One way to get around it is to put my head on my keyboard and look up at the screen.

Last of all, like aglet mentioned, unless you use a tool like colormunki or similar, your monitor isn't calibrated and it will not show the photos properly.

Another thing is, if you want to nail exposure exactly, I wouldn't worry with histogram. It only shows what info there is in the photo. I would get an handheld incident meter.

By the way, in my opinion the trend this days with digital photography all the photos end up really dark and grungy...

[Giklab]

Re: Your Face
One of my friends looks pretty much as you describe. Tell your friend to use the Contrast and Saturation sliders a bit more, but not too much (unless you want fairy eyes).

Regarding your exposure issue, if it looks right to you, it looks right to you. Having a calibrated monitor just means a higher chance for other people to see the photo how you see it.

@Nuff I think the reason why many photos are underexposed is that we edit them on monitors, which produce their own backlighting. And they seem brighter than their surroundings, which then leads us to pull the exposure a bit. And then there is the brightness setting...

[adwb]

Re the calibration down load any of the screen calibration test images available and correct it any way you like till it looks good to you, then save it on a card or disc or USB stick and view it on other people's pc screens, or tablets and see If you are way out, close or what compaired to yours , you could also print your corrected version and also compair to your screen and others,
Do this before spending money on calibration kit as all that is realy intended for is to get your images correct or the same if you like as a print from YOUR printer and does not even mean that it will be correct on someone else's printer.

[Nuff]

@Nuff I think the reason why many photos are underexposed is that we edit them on monitors, which produce their own backlighting. And they seem brighter than their surroundings, which then leads us to pull the exposure a bit. And then there is the brightness setting...

That's not quite the case. Most monitors on the showrooms have way too high brightness and contrast to awe customers. When I calibrated my monitor with colormunki I was surprised how much I had to dim my monitor. It is now set at less than 50%.
When your monitor is configured correctly, the image will look very similar on your monitor, on print and on working pros monitors. With the default config the normal photos will look too bright and what you think is normal. Are too dark.

Gotta love marketing departments...

[Giklab]

My laptop's monitor was set to 100% brightness by default. Didn't realize this until some photos got printed for an expo, and by then they were about 1 stop underexposed (also because the AdobeRGB/sRGB exposure thing)

Since then I have it set at 40-45%.